1132: Mailbag - Malik Nabers' Outlook, Guillotine Bidding, and More

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode 1132 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in.

Late-Round Fantasy Football members get a lot of stuff in season. There's weekly rankings, which include top 100 flex rankings. There's a live stream Q&A with yours truly for over an hour every Tuesday night. There's rest of season rankings, monthly dynasty rankings updates, an incredibly awesome and active Discord community, and so much more. To learn more about becoming a Late-Round member, just head to lateround.com. It's a mailbag day. Let's get to these questions.

The first question this week is from Raul from the Members Hub. It says, would like to know how you see Malik Nabers rest of season without Jaxson Dart. With some managers panicking, is now a good buy-low opportunity.

Yeah, so my rest of season rankings, I put Nabers in the tier that had him as like a high-end wide receiver too, assuming that he's healthy. And that health part is key. We're still kind of waiting to know exactly what's going on with Malik Nabers. But for purposes of this discussion, let's assume that he plays and that he's healthy. Now, there was some pushback with my ranking, because he was coming off of a bad game, and Jameis Winston looked terrible against the Rams. And I get it, but let me just explain this logic. I don't know how much we can really take away from that game. Jameis came in off the bench, they were facing a good defense, they were on the road, the Rams were in a must-win spot, and Nabers had a shoulder injury. That he apparently had to pop back into place.

I'm trying to have a greater view of this than just week two. Like genuinely, if that week didn't even exist, and you told someone that Jameis Winston, a guy who has helped carry wide receivers through passing volume and down-the-field throws throughout his career, if you told someone before the season that Jameis Winston would be Malik Nabers' quarterback, I feel like Nabers would easily be ranked as a wide receiver one. That people wouldn't view that as like a disastrous thing. I mean, the last time when we saw Jameis Winston as a consistent starter in the league, he was carrying Jerry Judy. Jameis Winston started two games last year. He had 201 and 366 passing yards in those games.

He was second behind Malik Willis, and passing yards per game started last year. Willis, though, he only had that one start where he dominated the Ravens. So small sample size. One game, two games. What does that really matter? Well, in 2024, he ranked only behind Jimmy Garoppolo and Josh Dobbs and passing yards per start.

Josh Dobbs started one game. It was week 18 Guess what? Jimmy Garoppolo also started one game in week 18

Jameis Winston started seven.

What that means is that of all quarterbacks who have started more than one game since the start of the 2024 season, Jameis Winston is first in yards per start.

At almost 290, second is Jared Goff.

Now, this obviously is not the end-all, but we know that Jameis loves to throw the ball down the field. He has a nine-yard average depth of target over this two-year time frame. And I'm a believer that Malik Nabers, if healthy, again, I want to stress that caveat, if he's healthy. But Nabers is one of the most talented wide receivers in this game. That 2024 Giants team saw Daniel Jones, Drew Locke and Tommy Devito get starts. In 2025, we got a little Russell Wilson with Malik Nabers. I mean, it's kind of crazy, but Malik Nabers has only run 40 routes in his career with Jaxson Dart under center. But let's look at this with every quarterback. With Daniel Jones on 277 routes, Nabers had a 2.19 yards per route run rate, and he saw a target on 33 percent of his routes run. With Drew Locke, those numbers were 176 routes, 2.56 yards per route run, and a 31 percent targets per route run rate. With Tommy DeVito, only 48 routes run, but he still had a 1.94 yards per route run rate. He saw a target on 31 percent of his routes run. And then with Russell Wilson, he had a 2.04 yards per route run rate, and 26 percent of his routes run resulted in a target, and that was on 123 routes. With bad quarterback after bad quarterback, Malik Nabers has gotten it done. We're talking about a yards per route run rate well above 2, while seeing a target on over 30 percent of his routes run. And that was mostly when Malik Nabers was a rookie.